As the protests, clashes between police and citizens, looting and arson continue in Philadelphia, I find myself thinking back to On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City. A lot of the book is about the relationship between the police and citizens in Philadelphia neighborhoods, and specifically (although place names are thinly disguised in the book) one of the neighborhoods where the tear gas and rubber bullets were flying yesterday.

The story the book tells is one where young men grow up without much prospect of finding a job in the formal economy, and get involved in the informal drug economy as a way to earn an income. In the informal drug economy, there is no recourse to the authorities when someone is robbed or otherwise taken advantage of. There are robberies, assaults, and cycles of escalating revenge that wind up with the vast majority of men in some neighborhoods in jail, probation or parole. Once young men are in jail, they tend to come out harder than they went in, and they are even less likely to break out of the cycle.

To break this cycle, we should follow the evidence of what has been tried and worked, of course. But just using logic and system thinking, the most obvious and quick way to break this cycle would be to legalize drugs. Then there would be no driver for the violence. Legalize, tax, and use the proceeds to fuel substance abuse and mental health programs that have been proven to work. Or just set up a universal health care system that provides these things to all citizens.

Then there is the harder long-term project of providing cradle-to-grave (at least cradle-to-retirement) childcare, education, and job training to people so they have the ability to earn a living, and providing generous unemployment and disability benefits to all citizens if they can’t earn a living through no fault of their own. Childcare, education, health care, unemployment, disability, retirement. The process of building a stable, fair, and democratic society for the long haul would be a hard and long-term project, but other countries have figured out most of it and the United States could learn.